Now the Order's primary mission--aside from taking the bastard out ASAP--
is to find his new headquarters and bring his victims to safety."
"We've been helping wherever we can, but it's hard to nail a moving target," Dylan said. "We can search missing persons reports online, looking for faces I recognize. And we run day missions to women's shelters, orphanages, flophouses ... anywhere we might get a lead on vanished young women."
Renata nodded. "Particularly those with possible ESP skills or other unusual capabilities that might hint at a potential Breedmate."
"We do what we can," Gabrielle said. "But we haven't caught a real break yet. It's like we're missing the key that will unlock the whole thing, and until we find that, all we're doing is chasing our own tails."
"Well, hang in there," Jenna said, that rusty old cop side of her sympathizing with the frustration of following go-nowhere leads.
"Persistence is often a detective's greatest ally."
"At least we don't have to worry about the Ancient anymore,"
Savannah said. "That's one less battle to be fought."
Around the breakfast gathering, a chorus of agreeing voices answered the statement.
"Why did the Ancient let you live, Jenna?"
The question came from Elise, the petite short-haired blonde on the other side of Tess. The reticent one of the group who looked like a fragile flower but had the frank, unwavering gaze of a warrior. She probably needed that inner steel, considering the company she and the other women in the compound were keeping.
Jenna glanced down at her plate and considered her answer. It took her a long moment to form the words. "He made me choose."
"What do you mean?" Savannah asked, her brow furrowing in question.
What will it be, Jenna Tucker-Darrow?
Life ... or death?
Jenna felt every pair of eyes rooted on her in the quiet. Forcing herself to meet the unspoken questions that hung like a weight in the air, she looked up. She squared her chin matter-of-factly and spoke the words succinctly, if quickly. "I wanted to die. It's what I would have preferred--at that moment, especially. He knew that, I'm certain of it. But for some reason, he seemed to want to toy with me, so he made me decide whether or not he would kill me that night."
"Oh, Jen, that's awful." Alex's voice hitched a little. Her arm came around Jenna's shoulders in a sheltering embrace. "That cruel son of a bitch."
"So," Elise prompted, "you told the Ancient to let you live and he did--just like that?"
Recalling the moment with harsh clarity now, Jenna gave a deliberate shake of her head. "I told him I wanted to live, and the last thing I remember is him slicing open his arm and removing that thing--that tiny bit of God-knows-what--that's now embedded inside of me."
She felt, rather than saw, the subtly exchanged glances that traveled around the table.
"Do you think that might be significant?" she asked, directing the question to the group as one. She tried to tamp down the sudden twinge of fear that was suddenly reverberating in her chest. "Do you think him placing that object inside me has something to do with whether I live or die?"
Alex took her hand in a reassuring grasp, but it was Tess who spoke before anyone else. "Maybe Gideon can run a few more tests and help us figure that out."
Jenna swallowed, then nodded.
Her plate of food sat untouched for the duration of the meal.
In a shadowed corner of an expansive luxury hotel suite in Boston, heavy drapes securely closed to block even the slightest ray of morning sunshine, the Breed male called Dragos sat in a silk-upholstered chair and drummed his fingernails on the mahogany lamp table beside him. Tardiness made him impatient, and impatience made him deadly.>"Maybe," Jenna said noncommittally, lifting her shoulder in a slight shrug.
If not for the disturbing bit of foreign material embedded in her upper spine, and, now, the gunshot wound that had grounded her for God only knew how long, she'd be gone from this place already. She wasn't sure how much longer she would be made to stay, but as soon as she was able to walk out of there again, she'd be history. Never mind what the Order thought they needed from her; she had no interest in sticking around to be their guinea pig.
It was still beyond strange to think she was actually sitting there--in a secret, military-grade headquarters populated by a team of vampire warriors and the seemingly sane, perfectly likable women who appeared to be happy and comfortably at home among them.
The surrealism of the whole thing got even stronger when Alex and the rest of the Order's females--five youthful, stunningly beautiful women and the blond little girl named Mira--filed out of the kitchen with the rest of breakfast. They chatted companionably, as relaxed among one another as if they'd been together all their lives.
They were a family--Alex included, even though she'd just arrived a week ago, along with Jenna.